Doing it in broad daylight

TV REVIEW: Four LiveRTÉ1, daily; The Daily ShowRTÉ1, daily; Ireland's GreatestRTÉ1, Monday; 1916 Seachtar na CáscaTG4, Wednesday

IT WASN’T QUITE Craggy Island TV – Pat Shortt’s dire Mattie gets top billing there – but

The Daily Show

got off to a very shaky start this week, which was odd considering the experience of its two presenters, Dáithí Ó Sé and Claire Byrne, and the hype surrounding it. For reasons that are completely baffling, especially now that the programmes have gone on air, RTÉ has decided to split the daytime offering in two:

Four Live

, presented by Maura Derrane, followed by

The Daily Show

.

Derrane is carrying the baton (and pretty much the same script) passed on from Derek and Thelma to Marty and Mary to Blathnaid and Sheena and so on, and it’s grand. A bit of cooking, a sob story or two, scary health features, consumer stuff, fashion, beauty: it’s a women’s magazine brought to the screen, and the success depends almost entirely on the likeability of the presenter. Derrane is fantastic: smart, warm, engaging and an empathetic interviewer, and if she looks a bit lonely in her queasy pastel-coloured studio it’s probably because we’re used to seeing a duo in that slot.

She got off to a nervous start on Monday; it didn’t help that she’d been sent out on high heels, in a little girl’s dress and ringlets, with a layer of slap you’d need a chisel to take off. By Tuesday her full-on confidence had kicked in, she’d lost the scary 80s-disco makeup and was off and running with an entirely watchable, smooth-running show. So far so predictable – and then on came Byrne and Ó Sé.

Theirs is a panel show, and the idea – I think – is to be more heavyweight than Derrane and discuss the social and political events of the day, or, as they said, what people are talking about. Except there’s also a pointless phone-in poll, a mortifyingly stupid quiz, consumer items and other random bits and bobs. On Monday their panel was made up of Gail Porter, Mickey Harte and Brian O’Connell, none of whom was adequately introduced to viewers. The first topic was the tanked-up behaviour of PJ Sheehan of Fine Gael. Byrne, who earned her current-affairs stripes heading up Newstalk’s breakfast show, asked the right questions, but, really, is this the panel you’d be interested in hearing answering them? (On Tuesday they had an advertising expert explaining the bond issue.)

It all seemed lightweight and confused. Even when the North Dublin TD Michael Kennedy came on to talk about Brian Cowen and revealed that he supported Tom Kitt in his call for a meeting of the parliamentary party – which was actually a scoop for the programme – it just sailed by the presenters in the clunky, old-fashioned-looking set.

Some of the other things we are all talking about, apparently, are nudist beaches (I must get out more), which gave Ó Sé – who was dressed like an extra from Riverdance: shiny blue shirt, black trousers – the chance to ratchet up the craic factor by referring to the time he got sunburn on his bottom. Then it became a bizarre game of musical chairs meets the hokey cokey. One minute a panellist was there chatting, the next gone – the diminutive Porter’s disappearance was so sudden I was worried that the giant Fianna Fáiler had sat on her.

The short quiz segment in the first programme – Ó Sé’s moment to shine – was about sports equipment, and the first answer was “hurley”, prompting a mystified Porter to murmur plaintively, “but I’m Scottish”. Byrne battled on – she’s by far the best thing about this ill-conceived show – but she was up against some astonishingly poor material, such as the phone interviews where the screen was filled for ages with a picture of the person being interviewed. Isn’t the point about panel shows that the interviewees should be, you know, there on the panel? Otherwise it’s radio on the telly, and why would you bother with that, especially when the topics being discussed badly on screen were being dissected in a much more informed way by Matt Cooper or Mary Wilson at the same time on radio?

While The Daily Showlooks like a two-hander, it's not really; it's Byrne's show, and Ó Sé doesn't really have much to do – except maybe provide a bit of whatever-you're-having-yourself craic to balance Byrne's seriousness – and the chemistry between the two is reminiscent of a big sister putting up with her vaguely irritating but nice brother. We're not talking Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley's onscreen fizz, which made such a hit of the BBC's One Show. It did introduce a new face to TV: Lottie Ryan – Gerry's daughter – who is the show's entertainment reporter and was so professional and cool you'd think she'd been doing it all her life.

TEMPTING AS IT IS to drone on about the impossibility of comparing apples and oranges, it's best to view RTÉ's Ireland's Greatest, the search for the greatest Irish person, as an opportunity to watch five well-made, superbly informative documentaries about five interesting people presented by five well-known faces. That's if they all turn out as good as the first documentary, with Michael McDowell championing Michael Collins. The idea is inspired by the 2002 BBC series Great Britons– and it's worth remembering just how subjective that was. Winston Churchill emerged as the greatest and Diana Princess of Wales came in third, ahead of William Shakespeare at number 5. Bono, who features in Ireland's Greatest,made the Great Britonslist too, at number 86.

McDowell’s case for Collins was persuasive, and he came across as genuinely, passionately pro-Collins. It was beautifully (and expensively) filmed, with extensive archive footage showing just how much Collins packed into his young life – “from guerrilla leader to the greatest diplomat”, according to McDowell. He was only 31 when he died, and the footage of the crowds he attracted to listen to his oratory was astonishing (can you imagine any politician doing that today?), and the scenes of his vast funeral were moving. The music established an elegiac, moving tone broken by a voice-over at the end looking for votes for Michael Collins.

SOME OF THE same footage cropped up in 1916 Seachtar na Cásca, the first in a major seven-part series, with a voiceover by Brendan Gleeson, each examining the life of one of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation. Told through archive footage, dramatic reconstruction and interviews with historians, the first programme looked at the life and very hard times of the first and probably least-known signatory, Tom Clarke. It's a worthwhile, scholarly project that still managed, thanks largely to the re-enactments, to be entertaining as well as informative. The black-and-white footage of Clarke's by-then elderly wife, Kathleen, telling about their last meeting before his execution was a reminder that this is history, but relatively recent history.

tvreview@irishtimes.com

KO'd with one click: TV may be the loser as online viewing increases

Where was Katie Taylor’s winning world-title fight on Saturday night? It wasn’t on TV. It can’t be that we’re so blase about seeing the tricolour hoisted above a medal podium and that our World Number One trophy cabinet is so jam packed – because it’s not. So why not televise the Bray boxer’s world-beating attempt? It would have been a ratings winner.

Sure, her homecoming made the news bulletins, but could the lack of interest be because the boxer in question is a woman? At least it was available online, with a live feed from a local station on RTÉ’s website, complete with Caribbean commentary – a treat in itself, as they were the most laid-back boxing commentators you’ll ever hear, though obviously mesmerised by Taylor’s skill.

Faster broadband is encouraging more and more people to ditch their TVs, and, having watched Taylor’s win online, it was all I could do not to pick up the laptop again on Sunday night and continue to surf the web to look for an illegal download (I didn’t!) of the pilot episode of Martin Scorsese’s gangster drama Boardwalk Empire – at $20 million (€13m) the most expensive pilot in TV history. Made by HBO, set at the start of Prohibition, and starring Steve Buscemi as the mobster boss of Atlantic City, it’s been talked about as the new Sopranos. It aired on Sunday in the US, and the ratings were so high – seven million tuned in – that a second series has been commissioned.

But then, if everyone downloaded it for free, who’d pay for making it, or the next generation of quality dramas? Just have to wait, so.